


London Façade

by BiancaAparo



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Gen, My First Work in This Fandom, Past Drug Use, Post-His Last Vow, Suicide Attempt, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 06:00:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1255498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BiancaAparo/pseuds/BiancaAparo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"... Magnussen would have ended up with a bullet in his brain no matter which Holmes she would have asked for help, make no mistake about that. There just wouldn’t have been this enormous mess to mop up afterwards..."</p><p>The sacrifice Mycroft made for Crown and Country and his little brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	London Façade

London Façade

_“I’m not lonely, Sherlock.”  
“How would you know?” _

\- From _The Empty Hearse_.

 

26 December 2014  
London, England  
3:15 AM

Boxing Day. Most people planned on having a lie-in, then perhaps go for a stroll to work off the excess from yesterday’s Christmas Dinner. Or brave the appalling crowds at the shopping centres for the post-holiday sales.

Mycroft Holmes instead planned on how he was going to save his brother’s life… again.

He stood on the balcony of one of his many undisclosed locations, staring down at the city, this dirty, noisy, ugly, wonderful city. He loved London as much as Sherlock did. And like his brother, he had several bolt-holes. Practical, really, a man like himself needed a place to nip into when it was necessary to avoid unwanted attention.

Plus there was a small childish bit of him (miniscule really) that still existed deep below the permafrost. That very small bit of him still enjoyed playing hide-and-seek, just like his brother. But he would never admit that. Out loud.

Speaking of his idiot baby brother…

His mobile hummed inside his coat pocket. He pulled it out, answered curtly. “Yes?”

“She’s here,” his personal assistant Anthea told him.

“Send her up,” Mycroft said and rang off. He checked the time on the mobile.

The lady was early. Good.

He stood waiting behind his desk when Anthea opened the massive mahogany doors, slender hands clasped behind his back. Whereas Sherlock could be quite content slumming in some crack den or skulking around inside the Empty Houses that camouflaged the Underground, Mycroft preferred the finer things in life.

Plus, it would never do to meet a member of the peerage in some rat-infested flat in Brixton.

Or at one of those filthy cafés or loud pubs Dr. Watson insisted on frequenting.

Or at that run-down hellhole on Baker Street, that dodgy flat Little Brother insisted on calling his _home_. Difficult for Mycroft to comprehend living there, much less meet potential clients there.

He did not move as Lady Smallwood entered. Her face was free from any sort of cosmetics and she wore her spectacles. But she had brushed and styled her blonde hair. She wore an expensive cashmere jumper, sharply creased trousers and sensible shoes. 

Even in a crisis, she was, in every sense of the word, a lady.

She seated herself in the leather chair across from Mycroft’s expansive desk.

There was nothing inside this enormous desk. It was just window dressing. Just like the rows and rows of thick books on the ceiling-to-floor shelves. Just old telephone directories with expensive looking dust jackets. The elaborately woven rug on the floor was just as Persian as Mycroft was. It would be more accurate to call the leather chairs “pleather” chairs. Even the “mahogany doors” were made from ordinary pine but because they had been so masterfully stained a rich hue and then polished to a high gloss, it fooled nearly everyone.

During the day, a television program used this particular room as one of their set for their “London scenes”.

He lifted his eyebrows at Anthea, who nodded and silently shut the “mahogany doors”.

“Lady Smallwood, thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” Mycroft sat down, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he did so. He loosely clasped his hands in front of him on his desk, giving her his full attention.

She arched an eyebrow “I assume this is no social call?”

“Quite not,” Mycroft said and proceeded to tell her, succinctly and unemotionally that Sherlock Holmes had gone to Appledore in hopes of implicating Charles Augustus Magnussen of blackmail and treason. Instead, he had made a complete pig’s ear of it all and gotten himself implicated instead, as well as his friend and partner, Dr. John Watson.

When he got to the part where Sherlock murdered Magnussen, Mycroft kept his face absolutely impassive as all the color drained away from Lady Smallwood’s.

“So, he’s dead then,” she said, recovering quickly from the shock “Magnussen.”

“Yes.”

“No one will mourn him.”

“No. Least of all by me. But there is the minor problem of my brother killing a man in cold blood.”

She took off her eyeglasses, held them in her hands, looking down at them. “They’ll hang him.”

“No.”

Startled, she jerked her head up, her mouth a little bit open “No?”

“No. He’s a self-proclaimed sociopath. After what Jim Moriarty put him through then whatever trauma he experienced while in hiding for two years as well as being shot last summer, it will be determined his sanity had been compromised.  Any barrister worth his salt will play the insanity card. All those disgusting stories published about him in the tabloids will act as proof. The jury will determine my brother does not know the difference between right and wrong and ship him off to the nearest psychiatric hospital as quickly as possible. Then he will be pumped with so many anti-psychotic medications he will spend the rest of his life drooling in front of the telly.”

Mycroft leaned back in his chair, the “leather” creaking. “I assure you, my brother would prefer to be hanged. Probably will attempt the deed himself when he realizes that is his fate. Ironically that would lead even more credibility to the whole mental instability theory.”  

“I see,” Lady Smallwood shifted in her seat. “Where is your brother now?”

“In protective custody,” Mycroft said while thinking _Under lock and key in my office at MI-6 by my order. Probably planning his imminent and daring escape as I speak. I gave him a clue at Christmas, of what to do if everything went to hell at Appledore…_

 _The “Eastern European” mission, of course. As if I didn’t know what he had been planning. Why else would I have brought my laptop to Christmas dinner? Not that there had been anything_ truly _sensitive on that computer anyway. Just enough tittle-tattle to entertain Magnussen until my people got there… information about that minor royal that wretched tart Irene Adler had entertained for starters… that would have kept Magnussen occupied for hours…_

 _Of course, we all thought Sherlock would have found the damning documents Magnussen kept for his odious blackmailing schemes. Most unfortunate the information was all inside Magnussen’s head. Killing him really was the only option. Problem is Sherlock doesn’t have a proper license to kill… if only he had joined MI-6 when he was asked… scratch that, if only he had been_ clean _when they had asked him _to join MI-6_ …_

_Hopefully by now he has found the prepaid mobile I had hid for him in my office. I know he made “friends” during his Great Hiatus. If I know my brother, he is now texting one of those “friends” to help get him out of Serbia the minute after MI-6 drops him off there… I also know he has more money than he knows what to do with hidden away in several off-shore accounts. He will survive, living in exile… away from London… just have to get him out of London first…_

_Now to make sure the lady is on board…  I need her cooperation. More than anything…_

The silence had stretched out uncomfortably while Mycroft had reflected on his dilemma while studying her. _Deducting her_. That was his secret to success, of course. He was just as skilled at deductions as Sherlock was, maybe even more so.

He just didn’t brag about it.

Or announce his observations out lout at the most inopportune times.   

Right now, she sat on the fence. Grief had aged her. Nerves had unsteadied her. Fear caused her to make mistakes. She was not eager to make another one.

Her husband chose to take his own life after Magnussen published the story about his torrid love affair with an underage girl. Sherlock had not been able to prevent that. He had been barely been able to sit up and breathe on his own when that salacious tale went viral.

Mycroft wished he could tell her that made Lord Smallwood the weak one, not her. But suicide always kills two people.

Mycroft knew that firsthand.

“I think,” Lady Smallwood said eventually, staring at her perfectly lacquered nails.  “That would be a waste of your brother’s talents to be left to rot in a padded cell.”

“Indeed,” Mycroft said as coolly as if they were discussing the weather. “So that is why you will convince the correct people of that fact, of course.”

“I can try,” she said, warily.

“You will do more than try,” Mycroft said, cool becoming cold. “Unless you would like it to become public knowledge you were the one who hired my brother in the first place to go after Magnussen. What if people thought you wanted Sherlock to do more than just investigate him? What if people thought you hired my mentally unstable brother as an assassin?”

“You wouldn’t-“

“No, of course I wouldn’t leak that to the press,” Mycroft lied. “But I cannot guarantee someone else would. I should think you would want to assist with this matter, Lady Smallwood. In the end, you are responsible for my brother getting involved with Magnussen in the first place. You threw him in the shark tank.”

“Only because he was the only one brave enough to stand up to him,” she said, her Arctic tones matching his. “What did Magnussen have on you, Mr. Holmes? What did he hold over your head, threaten you with so you would look the other way while he invaded people’s privacy, destroyed their lives? _My_ life?” 

“Elizabeth,” Mycroft said, gently, so softly she almost didn’t hear him.

“What?”

“You should have never had called Sherlock.”

“Who else could have helped me?” She lifted her chin, narrowed her eyes at him.

Exhaustion stripped his carefully constructed mask away. Suddenly he was a lovesick eighteen year old boy again. “You should have called _me_.”

She folded her lips very tightly together “I couldn’t be sure of your intentions. I had suspected for quite some time Magnussen had been blackmailing you as well.”

“He made the attempt,” Mycroft gave her a half-truth. “But that’s not the true reason why you called Sherlock instead of me.”

“You could always read me, Mike,” she smiled. “Like a book, you could.”  Blinking her eyes rapidly, trying to stave off the evitable tears, she said “I couldn’t trust your intentions. I wasn’t sure you would want to help my husband, to save my husband.”

“I see.”

“But you’re right. I should have called you,” she nodded, swallowing hard. Taking a shaky breath, she said “I loved him, Mike. I really did.”

“I know.”

“But I should have called _you_. Ages ago. Years ago. It should have been you. I should have married you.”

“Yes you should have,” Mycroft said, nodding, regaining control. “And you would have been perfectly miserable.”

“Would I?” she laughed without any mirth. “I’m sorry. I thought I was capable of making my own decisions?”

“Yes,” Mycroft said with the archness back in his voice. “And look where that landed you.”

“Always so cold, so cruel. _The Iceman_.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “And you thought you wanted to marry me.”

“You weren’t always like this, this though. Cold.”

True. Once he had been just a regular bloke getting drunk and having a laugh at university. School had always been ridiculously easy for him, so there was always time to go to a rugby match and the pub afterwards with the boys and still obtain high marks in his studies.

Yes, there had been a time he had people he regarded as friends, not goldfish.

Well… maybe not _friends_. Drinking buddies would be more accurate. Crude, but apt.

Then he a posh girl called Lizzie. But she was nothing like the daft bimbos the cross-bred, snobbish peerage usually produced. She was blonde and quick-witted and funny and she made him dizzy with excitement and she had also been His First. In every sense in the world.

He remembered how on That Night, after she had relieved him of his virginity, he had pedaled his bike back to his dorm in a blissful daze. Not realizing he had been on the wrong side of the road for a good two miles. Then almost ran into a tree when he overcorrected to swerve back into the left lane.

They went out for two, almost three years. Mike and Lizzie. Inseparable. Joined at the hip. The old ball and chain. The couple everyone wanted to be… the couple that couldn’t be.

Lizzie tried to tell him it didn’t matter he didn’t have a Title or loads of money. “Nobody cares about that sort of thing anymore,” she had said with a sniff after a disastrous Meet the Family Weekend. “People talk all the time about doing away with the monarchy and nobility anyhow. It’s all so antiquated and dull. I want to work in politics, not host boring luncheons and charity functions. I much rather be a Mrs. than a _lady_ …”

But Mycroft knew that was a lie. A lie she told herself. Certain people cared. People like her father cared. People who could trace their lineage back to Elizabethan times cared…   

Bully for _them_.

“Marry her anyway,” an obnoxious nearly-thirteen year old Sherlock had told him when he had come home for Christmas. He and that mangy mutt Redbeard had invaded his room, as they always did during the holidays. “Bugger what her dad says. For the Smart One, you’re being awfully thick. You love her, she puts up with you. You’re shagging. What’s the problem?”

“Oh what do you know about it?” he had snapped at his brother. “You don’t even like _girls_.”

He might as well have slapped the boy. Sherlock, always pale, had whitened even more. The light in his eerie tri-colored eyes had died out. Any pleasure he might have had in seeing his brother drained away. But, knowing what was expected of him, he struggled to master control, to hide his hurt. He had swallowed hard then tossed the heavy chemistry book he had been flipping through back into Mycroft’s rucksack. All elbows and knees, with another growth spurt yet to come, he stood up without any of the grace he would later possess as an adult.

Wordlessly, Sherlock had tugged on Redbeard’s collar and they slipped out of Mycroft’s room.

Sherlock had completely ignored Mycroft the rest of that holiday, no matter how hard he had tried to provoke the gawky boy into an argument or bribe him with some treat or game.

It took years for Mycroft to understand how deeply those words had wounded him. Didn’t fully realize it until Sherlock had brought his “friend” Victor Trevor home from university for the holidays. Then, of course there was his attachment, his slavish devotion to John Watson.   

He had only meant he thought Sherlock wasn’t mature enough yet to fancy girls. He hadn’t realized…hadn’t dreamed that his brother Played for the Other Team….

 _You see, but you don’t observe_.

He tried to tell himself it was because Sherlock had been so young. For heaven’s sake, a boy one month shy of his thirteenth birthday… still a child really… surely he couldn’t possibly fully grasp the concept of attraction and sexual identity yet… but that was just as big of a lie he told himself as the one Lizzie told herself about not wanting to be a lady.

He just hadn’t wanted to _observe_ because he hadn’t wanted to _see_ his young brother’s life becoming more complicated and troubled than it already was…it had been the tail end of the Eighties after all… it wasn’t like how it is now back then. It hadn’t been OK to be… _different_ back then. There were no support groups, no social media outlets preaching tolerance, no laws in civilized countries protecting the rights of _those types of people._ Different guaranteed difficult.

But it must have been predestined for Sherlock to lead a difficult life. When he had put Sherlock right in front of that shameless whore, Irene Adler, he thought it would be a safe case for Sherlock to investigate because he wasn’t attracted to women. Especially since his brother appeared to have chosen celibacy as his lifestyle…he claimed to be married to his Work… and by that point Sherlock had developed quite the little crush on his flat-mate… his “best friend”, indeed. Therefore, The Woman’s charms should have had no effect on him whatsoever…

Another vital deduction Mycroft had missed: his brother played for Both Teams, not just one.

But that was Sherlock all over, wasn’t it? Greedy.

He knew how badly his brother suffered on John’s wedding day. He had felt the same searing ache watching Elizabeth marry another. Had tasted bile in his mouth when she said “I do.”

He couldn’t give Sherlock words of comfort or encouragement because there were none.

_If you love something, set it free…_

_There are plenty of other fish in the sea…_

_It was just a crush…_

_You’ll find someone else…_

Not only were those words lies but banal and clichéd lies at that. That was more offensive than the lies themselves.

There hadn't been other fish in the sea. It hadn't been just a crush and he never found anyone else… anyone substantial, anyone worth his valuable time. A dalliance now and then, and that was becoming further and fewer in-between the older and colder he got. But he had set Lizzie free and it had felt like his heart had actually been ripped from his body, still bloody and beating and given to her on a silver platter as her wedding day present.

But he still lived. One does not need a heart to exist. Obviously.

It was inevitable, really. The Smart One and The Posh Girl grew up. Mike and Lizzie evolved into Mycroft Holmes and Lady Smallwood. And the lady indeed had doth protested too much after all. Being Mrs. Holmes would have been intolerable for Elizabeth. Especially when her Mr. Holmes disappeared into darkened rooms with dubious men and took secret telephone calls at strange hours, signed documents that determined the lifespan of a man. Decided what was in the best interest for England, even if people had to die because of it.

They would have been divorced in five years or less. Would that have been better?

Dear God, what if there had been… children? Perish the thought.

There _had_ been a scare, but it had been just a scare. Fortunately.

Oh yes, how _fortunate_ indeed since that little scare produced an especially heated row. Actually the ugliest row they had ever had. Nasty name-calling, unfounded accusations and doors slamming had been involved. How providential Lizzie had gone home for the Easter holidays after that fight. Lucky that at the very same time Lizzie was being introduced to the young and dashing Lord Smallwood, an older man with a world-weary face and ice-blue eyes had asked Mycroft to meet him in the dean’s office.

Had slid him a manila envelope and had asked him:

“How would you like to become one of the most powerful men in the world?”

To that Mycroft, all of one-and-twenty years old, had boldly replied “Why not _the_ most powerful man in the world?” 

“Oh Mr. Holmes,” the man’s smile had been chilling. “I think you and I will work very well together. Yes, very well indeed…”

And it had all worked out well for the both of them, Elizabeth and Mycroft, in the end.

_Can’t manage a broken heart? How telling…_

_Your loss would break my heart…_

She had been wrong, of course. He would have helped her save her husband. All she had needed to do was ask.

But she asked Sherlock instead. She had asked the wrong Holmes.

Oh, Magnussen would have ended up with a bullet in his brain no matter which Holmes she would have asked for help, make no mistake about that. There just wouldn't have been this enormous mess to mop up afterwards.

 _Why on earth didn't ABRA just shoot Magnussen when she had the chance and trusted Sherlock to keep his mouth shut?_  Mycroft had thought as he watched MI-6 officers handcuff Sherlock and haul him away while John looked on helplessly. He schooled himself not to look at the shell-shocked doctor while promising himself he would find a way to make Mary Watson pay for all the pain she inflicted on his brother. _Wicked bitch, you’ll die for what you did_ , he had thought venomously as the helicopter took him back to London. _You are not safe. I am a far worst threat to you than Magnussen ever was. The minute you’re not with child…_

But he had to push Mary out of his head for now. Sherlock took priority. His unstable, selfish, boastful, eccentric, brilliant, scientific, philosophical, loyal, loving little brother.

Maybe Sherlock didn't love him and he had no reason to, but Mycroft could and did deduct how his brother’s heart worked. It was broken and it was small and there was only room for a very select few inside of it. Molly Hooper the pathologist. Lestrade, the best-of-the-worst at The Met. Batty old Mrs. Hudson.

And John. Always John.

Battered and disjointed as his heart may be, it was still the best part of Sherlock Holmes and it was worth saving.

“Magnussen discovered how Sherlock came to be the man he is today and why,” Mycroft told Lady Smallwood. “And that it was completely my fault.”

“He did to you what he did to me then,” Lady Smallwood said “Threatened to go to the press.”

“It would have destroyed my career,” Mycroft steepled his fingers, like his little brother. “It would have killed Sherlock.”

She nodded. “You should have called me, when he did try to kill himself all those years ago.”

“As you may recall, the Fall from St. Bart’s was an elaborate ruse to ensnare Jim Moriarty.”

She gave him a wry smile “Not that time, Mike and you know it.”

Oh yes. The overdose. The intentional one.  

Finding him in that manky old flat he had lived at with six other junkies. Needle still in his arm. His heart, the best part about him, barely beating, pulse utterly erratic.

Six months ago, when he was shot, a bullet nearly pierced that same heart.

A shot caused by the woman married to John Watson and by the woman who sat in front of him.

He still loved her, but he would use her just as maliciously as Magnussen had if that’s what was necessary to save Sherlock.

He had no choice; he owed his brother so much. More than Sherlock would ever know.

And Elizabeth knew it. She was one of the few people who knew the whole story. How little William became Sherlock Holmes and why Mycroft blamed himself absolutely.

When Mycroft refused to reply to her gentle admonishment that he should have contacted all those years ago while his brother tried to depart from this life, she squared her shoulders, put her spectacles back on and said quietly “What do you need me to do?”

Trusting her implicitly, more than Anthea, more than Sherlock, more than himself, he told her exactly what to do and what he planned.

She nodded and stood up. “It’s a good plan, Mike. It’s brilliant. I’ll get to work immediately.”

When she started to walk away, he said “I am sorry about your husband. Truly.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. Smiled. Walked around the massive, empty desk, put her hand on his cheek. He closed his eyes, wished he was eighteen again. Wished he could just put his cares on a shelf for a time being, wished he could just wrap his arms around her waist and lose himself in her again.

She still wore the same perfume she had as a girl. Clare da la Lune.

He felt her lips against his other cheek then her hand withdrawing from his face.

He opened his eyes and watched her walk away.

A sentimental man would have put his hand on his cheek where hers had been.

Instead, he rose from his chair, gathered his coat and umbrella.

There was no time for sentiment. His brother’s life depended on his mind, not his heart.

His heart had been lost years ago anyhow.

Time to go to work.

Time to be Mycroft Holmes.

~THE END~

 

  

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been reading and lurking for a while now but this my first AO fic posting and my first Sherlock one-shot. Sorry about the non-beta and non-Britpicking. Hope you all enjoyed it!


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